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Beech Class

Welcome to the Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS). The adults in Beech Class are:

Mrs McNally Mrs Organ Mrs Edwards

W/B 18/03/2019

Welcome to another busy week ahead. Last week we enjoyed lots of sensory activities including pasta threading, rice and magnets, coloured spaghetti and play dough. Board games have been a real hit over the last few weeks and last week we particularly enjoyed Connect 4, hungry hippos and the Mr Men matching pairs game. Lots of children also created their own board games which provided a great opportunity to practise number formation and counting on.

We listened to our Focus Children during Show & Tell; it's wonderful to hear the children speaking with such confidence and enthusiasm. Last week we all looked carefully at a picture of magnified sand grains for our big talk circle time. This created lively and excitable discussion about what the objects in the picture might be. Some suggestions included rice, jelly beans, sweeties and treasure!

We had lots of fun on Friday for Comic Relief, thank you for all getting into the spirit of things. Mrs McNally popped in and said it was funny to see us all in red when she is used to us wearing blue!

This week we have our sharing assembly on Wednesday morning. We would love to see family in the audience, so please join us if you can. The children will be sharing some songs and talking about the things they enjoy and have achieved since starting school in September.

Phonics & Literacy

This week we will be continuing to work on 'magic e' including identifying words containing the split digraph in stories, and lots fun activities to remind of how 'magic e' changes words. We will also have lots of opportunities to continue practising our blending and decoding skills.

Maths

We are continuing to enjoy songs and rhymes that help us to learn and recall our number bonds to ten. Ask your child to tell you about Farmer Pete and his sheep! We will be able to access lots of different resources to support both our growing knowledge of number bonds and also identifying missing numbers and counting on and back.

Please can I remind you to send in a named water bottle for your child at the beginning of the week. We will rinse and refill each day and send home again on Fridays. It is much easier if the children have a bottle as they can freely access their water all day and cups tend to get spilt. Thank you :)

W/B 11/03/2019

It was lovely to see so many of you at Parent Consultations last week. Please do not hesitate to come and speak to me if you have any further questions or anything you would like to discuss about your child's learning and development.

Last week saw lots of wonderful creativity from the children in Beech Class. A fossil shared during Show and Tell was the catalyst for much interest about fossils and how they are formed. The children did lots of 'finding out' and the following day many made their own fossils using mini-beasts and salt dough! We were also inspired to dance and imagine living under the sea, as well as learning how special it is to share tea at 10 Downing Street!

There were domino rally championship challenges and rock pools being created in the classroom. We enthusiastically joined KS1 for pancake races and enjoyed Scotch pancakes for snack time on Shrove Tuesday, and Wednesday was a day for bookworms! The Reception children enjoyed sharing stories with the older children to celebrate World Book Day, and this led to lots of children making their own books and creating imaginative stories.

This week we will be thinking about what we would like to share in our class assembly and practising our songs to sing to you! Our assembly will be on Wednesday 20th March. It will be lovely to see as many of you that can make it. We are also beginning to think about Easter and our contribution to the Easter service.

Phonics and Literacy

This week we will be using our knowledge of vowels to help us to start learning about split digraphs or 'magic e'. This will help the children to recognise in their reading attempts when the first vowel in the digraph is sounded as the letter name rather than the letter sound, for example /gate/ using their phonic knowledge the children would sound the /a/ as the letter sound. This teaching will explain that the /e/ at the end of the word instructs the /a/ to instead make the sound of its letter name, and then the /e/ sits quietly.

Maths

We will continue to practise the different combinations that form our number bonds to 10. There will also be lots of opportunities to use our number knowledge playing a range of games, as well as inventing our own games. There will be Numicon challenges and a range of equipment to apply our understanding of shape, space and measures.

If you own anything which might provide a conversation prompt for our 'big talk' session, I would be really grateful if I could please borrow it for the day. Anything which it isn't immediately clear what it is/does, for example, would be perfect. Last week we examined a very old wooden nut cracker carved to look like Father Christmas. The children pass the object around the circle and discuss what they think it is, and what it might be used for. This promotes rich, descriptive language which will later enable your children to become fabulous creative writers!

I will, of course, ensure the children take great care of anything lent to us and return it to you at the end of the day. Thank you.

W/B 04/03/2019

The children really enjoyed the new classroom layout last week and we observed lots of engagement and in turn, some great learning opportunities utilised by our young learners. The 'In The Moment' approach allows us to focus on activities and tasks that the children are really interested in, and following their lead means that we are seeing increased engagement and motivation to learn.

Over the forthcoming weeks you will receive a sheet asking you about your child's interests at home and out of school, so that we can learn more about all the things which spark an interest and inspire them. Each week there will be 3 or 4 children that will be our focus children and this will also include them taking a lead in the Show and Tell session that week. This is part of an important focus on enhancing verbal literacy which will in turn extend their vocabulary and positively influence the children's written attempts.

Last week saw children choosing to make books, playing board games and inventing scoring systems, we observed great examples of team work and problem solving and visitors to our classroom commented on how calm it was and how the children were so busy and on task in Beech Class.

I have no doubt that this week will bring more exciting learning opportunities, creativity and sharing of ideas!

I look forward to seeing you all at parent consultations this week too.

Literacy & Phonics

This week we will be encouraging the children to use the sounds that they have learnt to blend and decode CVC words and building their confidence to 'have a go' at writing some words. We will be sharing lots of stories, book choices will be dictated by the direction that the children's learning takes us in, and children will be supported to create stories with an adult scribing for them as required.

Maths

In Maths we will be using positional language and directions. The children will think about 'over', 'under', 'behind', 'in front of', 'opposite' etc. They will then be given lots of opportunities to apply this new knowledge in their play-based activities.

The teaching input for directions involves creating a treasure map, so I anticipate that we might see some creative activities suitable for seafarers this week! ;) This is an area that always promotes lots of discussion, so will, I'm sure, become cross-curricula and help to encourage rich language too- win-win!

W/B 25/02/2019

Welcome back! I hope that you have had a lovely half term break and had the opportunity to enjoy the beautiful sunshine!

You will notice a few changes to the classroom when you return. To accommodate a more child-initiated way of working, the classroom has been further organised into learning areas to facilitate the children accessing resources with increasing confidence and independence.

We will be talking to the children about the changes and encouraging them to explore the environment.

Phonics & Literacy

This week in phonics we will be learning about /y/ when it is making a vowel sound ie. my, funny, why etc. We will also be providing lots of exciting opportunities to promote writing attempts and encourage blending of CVC words for writing.

There will be plenty of opportunities to practise our tripod grips holding pens, pencils, paint brushes, stampers and chunky chalks.

We will be beginning to encourage the children to create their own stories with us adults on hand to scribe where needed. Of course there will continue to be lots of stories shared and singing rhymes and songs too.

Maths

The children will be encouraged to use our wide variety of maths resources to further enhance their number skills. We will continue using our ever improving counting skills and encouraging the children's 1:1 correspondence by touching/ moving objects on each count. We will also explore the concept of counting alternative things such as sounds and actions as well as physical resources.

The children will also be offered lots of resources for use in their play to think about size, length and weight. These include tape measures, scales and rulers. We will be observing the language children use and their ability to problem solve during their child-led play.

I look forward to welcoming you all back for a busy and fun half term ahead. I would be grateful if you are able to return the sheet sent home before the holidays asking about your child's experiences outside of school.

W/B 11/02/2019

Welcome to the final week of this half term! I hope that you have all enjoyed a restful weekend.

This will be our last week focusing on our 'Winter' topic. After half term we will be approaching the Early Years' Foundation Stage Framework slightly differently in Reception, and rather than having a topic focus, we will be led by the interests of the children in Beech Class. I will share the changes with you all in more detail after the half term break.

Phonics & Literacy

This week in phonics we will be continuing with the long 'i' phoneme - /igh/ie/ye.

The children are beginning to make more attempts at writing using their phonic knowledge, and we will continue to provide lots of opportunities for them to practise writing in different situations. This week the children will be making pizzas. We will be using language to sequence the preparation process and consider instructional language using 'first', 'after', 'then', 'next' and 'finally'. We will be sharing recipe books and looking at ingredients and recipe instructions. The children will be supported to record their pizza chef experience!

Maths

We will continue to build on our number work using our fingers to secure our understanding of counting up to, and down from, ten. We will also work in small groups and pairs to become more confident with number bonds to ten. We have been beginning to think about estimation and ways to group items to make it easier to identify quantities in a group.

The children will have access to lots of fun activities to apply their knowledge and practise their number skills both in the classroom and in our outdoor area.

I will be sending home a sheet towards the end of this week, asking you to share experiences from home this half term. This helps us to gain a full picture for your children's learning journals including things which they are enjoying outside of school. I hope you will be happy to share this and return the sheet to school after the break. Wishing you all a lovely half term week. Take care and have fun.

W/B 04/02/2019

I hope you had the opportunity to get out and enjoy the snow! The children loved ice-play in class last week, so I am sure that the snow was met with great delight! Congratulations to Mrs Organ who completed a rather cold Chichester Priory 10K on Sunday morning.

This week in Beech Class, we have lots of exciting learning experiences planned. We are building a milk carton igloo outside with Playgroup, so if you are able to rinse out any empty 4 pint milk cartons, and bring them in, we would be really grateful. We need about 650 to complete the project, but I am sure the children will love outdoor play in the completed igloo!

Phonics & Literacy

This week in phonics we will be learning the long 'i' phoneme - /igh/ie/ye. We will continue using our Jolly Phonics songs and actions to support our phoneme- grapheme correspondence and to help us to blend for reading and writing attempts.

We will be ordering tasks sequentially to produce a list of instructions. The stories we will be sharing this week link to our number work and will include 'One is a snail, Ten is a crab' by April & Jeff Sayre and 'How do dinosaurs count to ten?' by Jane Tolen & Mark Teague.

We will also be celebrating Chinese New Year.

We will be continuing with lots of fun activities to improve our fine manipulative skills.

Maths

We will be using Mrs Organ's success to learn about ordinal numbers in maths this week. We will be making our own medals and thinking about podium positions! Our sequential literacy task will link into our number work with us thinking about the order that instructions need to be completed in order to achieve success ie. 1st I will..... 2nd I need to... 3rd I will find.... etc.

The children will continue to count in ones and tens and look out for missing numbers on our number washing line. We will continue to count out objects to help promote 1:1 correspondence as well as practising our number formation.

W/B 28/01/2019

We hope that you have all had a good weekend. This week in Beech Class we will be continuing to enjoy activities linked to our Winter topic including rescuing penguins and polar bears from blocks of ice and moving like penguins in our PE lessons! We will continue to practise our numeracy and literacy skills with a carousel of activities each day to choose from.

Phonics & Literacy

This week in phonics we will be learning the 'or' digraph. We will also be playing phonics games and using the Jolly Phonics songs which help us to recall all of the phonemes we have learnt to date. We will be sharing stories to support our topic including 'Little Penguin: Emperor of Antarctica' by Johnathan London and 'In Arctic Waters' by Laura Crawford.

After sharing stories at home, ask your child to recall the key events from the story. Challenge them to think of an alternative ending!

We are also doing lots of letter formation practise, as well as matching the grapheme to the phoneme in our writing attempts. To help us improve our pencil grips, we will be using lots of fun activities to strengthen our fine manipulative skills including threading activities and using chunky tweezers!

Maths

This week in maths we will be solving number problems. We will be reciting numbers, counting out objects, counting back and ordering numbers. We will also be working on correctly forming our numerals.

You can help to support these activities at home by using counting in day to day activities; counting the stairs together as you go up to bed, noticing numbers in the environment such as road signs and house numbers, and counting out food items when making meals together.

W/B 21/01/2019

We are working really hard in Beech Class this term. Mrs McNally has settled in and we are being great helpers showing her where things are kept and sharing all of our exciting learning from last term!

Last week we learnt the long 'a' sound in phonics and we learnt about money in our number work. We are all enjoying the role play area being a shop.

Please continue to share stories at home and notice numbers and shapes in the environment.

Phonics & Literacy

This week in phonics we are learning about the long 'e' sound. We will be sharing stories about winter including 'Lost and Found' by Oliver Jeffers and 'Penguin' by Polly Dunbar. The children will be working on their letter formation and blending sounds for writing attempts.

Maths

In maths this week we will be using 'The Very Hungry Caterpillar' by Eric Carle and 'Mr Wolf's Week' by Colin Hawkins to help us to learn the days of the week and how to order them. We will also be beginning to think about some simple time concepts. We will continue to make sure counting is secure with number games and activities.

W/B 7/1/19

Happy New Year! Welcome back to Beech class, We are really pleased to now have Mrs McNally with us and it is Mrs McKee's last day this Thursday. This week we have been settling back in and talking about our new topic WINTER.

PHONICS

This week in phonics we have been re-capping digraphs, 'sh' 'ch' 'th' 'ng' and 'qu'

MATHS

This week in maths we have been looking at 2D and 3D shapes. We have been talking about the properties of shape and have even gone on a shape hunt.

W/B 10/12/18

We are now in the run up to Christmas! Thank you all so much for attending our carol service and Beech class nativity, we really hope you enjoyed it. The children were fantastic throughout.

Please continue to practise word wallet words and use your number cards to help the children recognise the numbers and match them to the corresponding pictures.

This next week is really busy and filled with christmas activities.

Dates to remember

Thursday 13th December Chartwell's Christmas Lunch

Friday 14th December Christmas Jumper Day. Children are to wear a christmas jumper and own clothes (not school uniform) Please can you also bring a £1 charity donation.

Tuesday 18th December Christmas Parties. Children come to school in their school uniform but bring party clothes in a bag and we will get them changed before lunch. There are no school lunches on this day but each child is to bring in a christmas party lunch box, this can include chocolate!!!!

Wednesday 19th December is the last day of term. Children are to come to school in their own clothes (non-school uniform) school finishes at 3.20 as normal.

We all in Beech Class wish you a very HAPPY CHRISTMAS AND A WONDERFUL NEW YEAR and look forward to seeing you next year!

W/B 3/12/18

This week we have begun the run down to Christmas. We are practising our nativity for the first time in the church on Thursday morning and we have lots of Christmas activities planned in the classroom.

Phonics

We have learnt all our initial sounds for this half term and are now working on our blending sounds to make words.

This week we have been learning about Diwali, which is the Hindu Festival of light. The children made Diyas using clay and jewels to hold small tea lights in.

PHONICS

This week we are learning three new letter sounds 'j' 'v' 'w'

MATHS

In maths this week we have been finding different ways to make 5. We have been adding 2 number together and we have been using our fingers to show the amount.

W/B 29/10/18

I hope you all had a wonderful relaxing half term. This week we have started to talk about space and have really enjoyed reading the book 'Aliens Love Underpants'. We have been making space rockets and enjoyed playing in our spaceship role play area. We were really lucky to have a visit from Jane and Buddy from the NSPCC. They talked to us about keeping safe and who to talk to if we ever felt worried. The whole school is going to raise money for the NSPCC by taking part in "Buddy's Big Workout" on Monday 5th November. This means that as a school we will keep fitness and dance going for the whole day! Beech class will have some fun fitness activities with Mr Ruff during playtime to keep the action going! We hope that you will sponsor your children so that we can raise lots of money for the NSPCC.

PHONICS

Our sounds this week are 'e' 'u' and 'r'.

Your children have learnt actions with each sound they have learnt. These actions can help them to remember each sound when they are reading them. Ask your child at home to show you the actions associated to each sound.

Maths

This week we have been learning about repeating patterns. the children have made some wonderful repeating patterns using our multi link blocks. We also played a patterns game on our interactive whiteboard.

W/B 15/10/18

Our final week before half term. The children in Beech class have had a brilliant start to school.

Last week we enjoyed our first harvest festival and sang beautifully in church. We found some frozen dinosaur eggs in our outdoor area and really enjoyed helping them hatch!!! This week we are learning about shapes and are going to make some roarsome dinosaur shape pictures.

PLEASE REMEMBER this Friday 19th October is an INSET day and school will be closed.

PHONICS

We spent last week revisiting all the sounds we have already learnt and we learnt about blending those sounds to make words. We met Fred Frog who can only talk using sounds and he made some words like 'sat' 'pin' 'pat' which we sounded out and blended together and then said the words.

You can sing the Jolly Phonics song at home with your children. Here is all the sounds we have already learnt.

This week we are learning three new letter sounds 'o' 'c' and 'k'

Maths

In Maths this week we are learning about shapes. We will be naming different shapes and looking at he properties of these shapes. We will also be focusing on the similarities and differences between these shapes.

Here are some number games we enjoyed playing in class last week.

W/B 1/10/18

This week the dinosaurs have taken over! We have a wonderful dinosaur jungle (small world) in our classroom and a dinosaur swamp has appeared in our outdoor area. We learnt about one of the largest dinosaurs that roamed the planet, the Argentinosaurus and talked about meat eating dinosaurs (Carnivores) and plant eating dinosaurs (Herbivores)

Phonics

This week our focus sounds are 'm' 'd' and 'g'

Maths

This week we have started looking at numbers beyond 10, we have been pegging numbers onto a number line and helping Muddles (our very mathematically confused puppet) to put the numbers into the correct order.

Don't forget that Thursday the 11th October @ 2pm is our school's Harvest Festival service at St. Mary's church Fittleworth. Everyone is welcome to come and you can pick your child up from school after the service.

W/B 24/9/18

We have had another busy week in Beech class. The children are settling in really well and have learnt lots of new routines. They did really well getting themselves changed and ready for PE on Monday and we were really lucky to have Lydia join us and teach us some wonderful yoga poses. We would still love to see some wonderful Autumnal treasures you may have found on a walk, conkers, acorns or just some beautiful autumn leaves. We are also beginning to talk about DINOSAURS, which will be our new topic up until half term.

PHONICS

This week our focus sounds are 'p' 'i' and 'n' Don't forget to use your yellow sound books to practise these sounds with your child at home. We have enjoyed watching Geraldine searching for these sounds too! Please click on the links below to watch Geraldine at home.

Number

We are always singing a variety of number songs and are learning to recognise and learn numbers to 10 and beyond. Please use the number cards at home to play number matching games with your children. you could also take pictures of them playing with the cards and stick this into your orange home communication books.

W/B 17/9/18

We had a great week last week in Beech class. Your children have been working really hard on learning how Beech class works, big school is a little different from playgroup! Although we are still constantly learning through play there are a lot more routines to follow, learning to line up and face the right way, while not talking can all be quite a challenge but I am pleased to say they are all doing so well. I can imagine lots will be very tired when they come home though.

PHONICS

This week we are very excited to be starting our phonics sessions. Today we learnt the 'S' phoneme, the children were brilliant at telling me lots of things that began with S. During the course of the week we will also learn the 'a' phoneme and 't' phoneme. Please use the yellow sound books (in your book bags) to practise these sounds at home and allowed the children draw or attempt to write any words that begin with these sounds. You may want to look through a magazine with your child and cut pictures out of items that start with that sound and stick those in to. Please can you leave the sound books inside your children's book bags so hat we are able to see all the lovely work they have done. Please find the attachment below for the Jolly phonics parent guide.

READING

You will also find inside your book bags your child's first reading book and their reading diaries. These first books will contain no words but are an opportunity to talk about the book together and get to know the characters. There is lots to talk about together on each page and a story to follow. Please can you sign the reading diary to say that you have read the book and write a comment telling us about what your child thought of the book or any comments that they made about the story. PLEASE keep reading diaries and reading books inside your book bags each day so that we can change books and check your reading diaries for any comments. Here's a link to the BBC website which tells you more about each character in the Oxford Reading Tree stories. THE MAGIC KEY

In your book bags you may have already spotted your word wallets and number cards.

Please use your number cards however you wish to help your child practise counting and number recognition.

The word wallets contain names of the characters from the Oxford reading tree books, please look at these with your child and read through them together. During the term we will add more words for your child to practise and read with you at home. Please can both the word wallets and number cards stay in the book bags so that we can use them in school too.

WB 10/9/18

All the Beech class children have settled in amazingly well and have coped really well with their first few full days. This week we will be getting used to a WHOLE week of full days! We will be continuing to share our treasure boxes and the children will have time to free flow (self initiated learning). Each child will bring home a rhyming book each night for you to read to them. We will be introducing the children to our reading scheme within the next few weeks.

In Beech class we are really enjoying singing together and wanted to share our favourite songs with you. Please click on the links to hear and see the music videos.

We are going to spend this week settling in and getting to know one another.

The Early Years Foundation Stage (EYFS) Curriculum (2014) has 3 prime and 4 specific areas of learning:

Prime Areas

Personal Social and Emotional Development

Communication and Language

Physical Development

Specific areas

Literacy

Maths

Understanding the World

Expressive arts and design

The curriculum is delivered through topics that change each half term. The children will take part in whole class, group and one to one adult led and child initiated learning activities. For the remainder of the time they have ‘free flow’. Play underpins all development and learning for young children. Most children play spontaneously, although some may need adult support, and it is through play that they develop intellectually, creatively, physically, socially and emotionally. ‘Free flow’ provides opportunities for children to be active, independent learners and enhances all areas of learning. Observing children during their play provides the foundations for assessment in the Early Years.